One of the quietest killers of a growing mid-market company is friction between the Controller and the CFO.
It doesn’t show up on a dashboard. It shows up in the close running late, in two versions of the same forecast landing on your desk, and in good people quietly starting to look. By the time it reaches you, it’s been building for months.
I’ve placed enough of both over 20+ years to know this: it’s rarely a personality problem. It’s a role problem. One person could run finance at $20M. Somewhere on the way to $75M, a CFO gets added — the right move — but nobody redraws who owns what. The Controller keeps doing what they’ve always done. The CFO does what the role now demands. The two jobs overlap in some places and leave gaps in others, and nobody decided that on purpose.
The Three Questions I Ask Before Calling It a Hiring Problem
Has anyone actually written down where the Controller’s job ends and the CFO’s job begins — specific to how you operate, not a template?
Is this about ability, or about scope nobody defined?
When did this last work, and what changed since then?
Sometimes it really is a hiring problem — the Controller who was right at $20M isn’t the fit at $75M. But more often than I expected early in my career, it’s fixable without replacing anyone, just by defining the roles the way the company actually grew.
If you’re watching this play out right now, reach out before you write a job description.